Healthy Apple-Carrot-Oat Muffins, or, Not a Food Blog

On my not great days, it’s God, some people, food, other people. or even…God, food, forget people.

I really, really love food. I love to make it, buy it, eat it, think about it, prepare it. I want it all the time. The more the better. The better the better. But for all that, I am not a food blogger. Even though this is a post about a recipe I adapted and made. I don’t have a camera or nutrition facts. I make food when I want to and not on a schedule. I have a habit of making a meal on a Monday and just recreating it for dinner til the end of time. Because it keeps being good! and generally it involves a frying pan, a chopping board, and a bowl to make and eat. Low maintenance, bebe.

As always, too much ado. So without further of it, the food blogging:

I wanted to make something for breakfast on weekends when we’re running out to Bible studies and church, or weekdays when I’ve gotta be catching a bus. I also wanted something that wouldn’t COMPLETELY negate all the running (let’s be real…wheeze-jogging) I’ve been up to. I had a list of ingredients I wanted to use, so I turned to the Internet…

and found nothing.

Okay, not nothing, but nothing perfect. Maybe it’s age and maybe it’s living where finding the right ingredients for things is a creative struggle, but it’s become more important to me to create what I imagined, rather than settling for what’s available. SO I adapted from a couple of recipes: Deb’s from Smitten Kitchen (is it creepy that I’ve read every single post on her site?) and this one from Minimalist Baker (which is new to me but I am about to begin happily stalking). So I got to work.

The inclusion of the banana may have happened after everything was mixed, but looked a little dry, and I saw these and thought, sure. And it may have found its way into the batter by being hand-squleched, because I may not have felt like dirtying more dished for a lone banana. But I divulge nothing.

SO appealing, no?

I also may have fashioned liners out of something labeled ‘paper baking foil’ because I may not have wanted to grease all the tins all the dang time.

This is a really simple recipe, and the results were fully satisfying. Because there’s such a small amount of sweetener, most of the flavor comes from the fruit, and those flavors intensify over time. That means that these are much better after you let them cool, or sit overnight. These are dense and super-textured, with the banana smoothness, the bits of carrot and apple, the burst of cranberry tang, the nutty pumpkin seeds, and the crunchy lil chia seeds that sneak into your molars. There’s a lot going on here, but this is the Little Muffin That Could.

I mean…look at that lil beauty.

Healthy Apple-Carrot-Oat Muffins

(Makes 16 muffins)

Preheat oven to 400F/ 204C. Grease muffin tin or line with cupcake holders.

Ingredients:

1 c. flour (any kind will do, if you’re gf or vegan, you can easily substitute meal or gf flour)

optional generous fistfuls of nuts and dried fruit (cranberry and pumpkin seeds made it into mine)

Dry ingredients in one bowl, wet in another. Toss the Dries together, then vigorously mix the Wets. Then pour the Wets in with the Dries. Let madness ensue until ingredients are all moistened and comfortable about it. This is where the Optionals get to come play. Let ’em. Mix again.

Fill greased muffin tins about half way up. These are dense lil dudes, so they don’t rise much. Bake at 400F (205C) for about 15 minutes (my oven bakes way too fast, so yours might take longer) or until a toothpick in the center comes out clean. Let cool overnight and then gorge yo’self. But beware of…ahem…fiber overload.